This invention relates to a sprayer cap structure and, more particularly, to a sprayer cap capable of reliably simplifying the switching operation between a spraying and a streaming of fluid or liquid.
There is a certain type of a sprayer cap structure for spraying liquid in a bottle-shaped container called a squeeze sprayer. This squeeze sprayer sprays and atomizes the liquid in the container by deforming or squeezing the container body to enhance the internal pressure of the container.
However, this squeeze sprayer not only sprays the liquid in the container body but liquid necessarily flows out or streams in the body as required according to the using state.
In this case, it is desired to allow a sprayer cap to be able to both spray or atomize and stream liquid in a container body. It is further required in the sprayer cap to simply switch between the spraying and the streaming with stable directivity as well as to readily and reliably operate the spraying and the streaming
In view of such requirements in the sprayer cap, it is considered to prepare a sprayer cap of te structure in which an inner plug is perforated with a first hole communicating with the bottom of a bottle-shaped container through a pipe for injecting liquid and with a second hole merely communicating within a container body as an air hole. The inner plug is associated rotatably with a nozzle unit formed with spinner grooves made on the inner peripheral surface and perforated with a nozzle hole.
This sprayer cap sprays liquid from the nozzle hole by inwardly pressing or squeezing the container body in the state that the first and second holes are positioned relative to the spinner grooves to increase the internal pressure thereby injecting the liquid from the first hole and the air from the second hole. The sprayer cap streams the liquid by communicating only between the second hole and the nozzle hole, inverting the container body upside down and increasing the internal pressure.
However, in such conventional sprayer cap structure, there arise problems such that, if the container body is excessively inclined particularly in the spraying state, the liquid is injected from the second hole as the air hole, thereby disabling effective spraying action. Alternatively, if the liquid level in the pipe decreases especially if the remaining liquid excessively decreases, a high internal pressure is required to inject the liquid from the first hole, so that the container body should be strongly deformed and squeezed, with the result that, even if the body is squeezed to an allowable degree, sufficient internal pressure cannot be obtained in the body in some cases.